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Using the gerund in Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4659 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 9 of 12 11 December 2011 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, sometimes we native speakers do not really master our mother tongue, just sort of
'know' when something sounds right or not. At least that happens with me :) Anyway, I think that the gerund can be used almost always e.g. when being asked what is happening at the moment/what you are doing. In the case of the imperfect, "aprendía" sounds like "I used to learn", giving a sense of something that happened quite a long time ago. I think it could also be used in a poetic way. "Yo estaba aprendiendo" sounds like "I was learning", and I believe it fits wether it was last week or years ago. Of course both mean non-finished or on-going actions in the past. Hope this helps a bit. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4662 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 12 11 December 2011 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm confused too. I'm beginning to think that this is a good reason for language students to do a lot of reading. After all, real-life usage is the final arbiter in all such debates, and long-time exposure should, in theory, help one develop the much coveted Sprachgefühl. I'm going to keep a small note pad with me when I read in Spanish and make an informal tally of when each construction is used and what the apparent intent was. It will be interesting to see what I learn from that exercise. For example, I just grabbed one of the books I've already read (Harry Potter Vol 1) and opened it up at random and scanned for the first instance of either form. I found this sentence right after Neville had received a magical remembering device ("Recordadora") as a gift: "Neville estaba tratando de recordar qué era lo que había olvidado, cuando Draco Malfoy, que pasaba al lado de la mesa de Gryffindor, le quitó la Recordadora de las manos." "X1 eataba tratando ... cuando X2, que pasaba ..., le quitó ..." The English original was: "X1 was trying to... when X2, who was passing ..., snatched it...." So we have continuous action one (trying), followed by shorter embedded, and somewhat incidental continuous action two (passing by), when continuous action one is interrupted by action three (snatched). It's little puzzles like this that make language learning so fascinating. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4546 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 11 of 12 14 December 2011 at 5:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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''Peninsular informants said está lloviendo on seeing rain through the window, and thought that llueve, in this case, sounded vaguely poetic or archaic''.
A New Reference Grammar of Spoken Spanish. John Butt & Carmen Benjamin 4th edition Edited by Camundonguinho on 14 December 2011 at 5:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Políglota Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 4495 days ago 2 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, Italian, Russian Studies: Turkish, Georgian, Persian | Message 12 of 12 15 January 2012 at 4:55am | IP Logged | |||||
That is true at least in Mexican Spanish. Yo estaba aprendiendo implies, in a direct way, something happened that forced you to interrupt the action. You could use this construction to answer the question -¿Qué estabas haciendo cuándo sonó el teléfono? -Estaba aprendiendo nuevas palabras, etc. I was learning new words, but the ring of the phone interrupted my train of thought. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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